Rockman (amplifier)
The Rockman is a small guitar amplifier for headphones to which a keyboard can also be connected.
development
The original Rockman was developed by Tom Scholz , founder of the rock band Boston . The Rockman was initially manufactured and sold by SR&D Scholz Research & Development Inc., which was sold to Dunlop Manufacturing Inc. in 1995 . Dunlop continues to manufacture the Rockman, Tom Scholz's signature still appears on the unit today.
In the early 1980s, the successful portable allowed cassette player from Sony , the Walkman , that a person somewhere music could be heard, without disturbing anyone - at that time an unusual innovation. In 1982, Scholz used the same basic idea to develop a portable guitar amplifier for headphones. The result was the Rockman, whose name was also based on the Walkman.
With the effects of distortion , stereo chorus and echo , the Rockman has more than many ordinary guitar amplifiers. It is also equipped with a stereo input socket so that a guitarist can hear and play a sound program from another audio source. The excellent signal-to-noise ratio is the same as in a professional studio.
The Rockman quickly convinced with its diverse sound formation, which ranges from an almost sound-neutral amplification to a strongly distorted sound, so that in addition to Tom Scholz, other well-known guitarists such as Alex Lifeson from Rush , Charlotte Caffey from the Go-Gos and Billy Gibbons from ZZ TOP den Rockman used it early on.
Rock modules
In the late 1980s, SR&D Inc. developed and produced so-called rock modules, control units that allowed the user to modulate the Rockman's effects and enable extensive control of the effect parameters. These units continued to be marketed under the Rockman label.
The Rockman Sustainor, at the heart of any Rockman system, was essentially a configurable two-channel preamp with compression. Other rock modules had equalizers , stereo chorus, stereo echo, reverb and delay effects ( delay ), distortion generators and compressors .
The rock modules were all analog devices. Their sales therefore collapsed in the early 1990s when the digitization of signals revolutionized music technology, as a completely new generation of amplification effects was now possible. The product range was consequently severely restricted. Today there is an established market for used modules from the Rockman line. Some units are even priced higher than the original catalog price.
